


Chasing Echoes

by brokenmemento



Series: Smoke and Retribution [2]
Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Angst, Established Relationship, F/F, Flashbacks, Fluff, Mistakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-08-11 04:15:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16468532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: In order for Frankie to move forward with her future, she must examine the past and reconcile her mistakes.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Short writings between 750-1k each. Continues from "The Agreement." You don't have to read it to really get this plot of this one though.

The idea hits her early, but her back feels as if its ensconced in a cloud pillow on her leather couch, so she lets it brew in her until she can’t hold it any longer. It’s afternoon when she finds Grace sitting at her laptop, working, and yanks her by the hand and to the car. Provisions in tow, the Leaf’s tires pound the asphalt, stick a little in the desert sun. It’s setting but they’ve got an hour or so of daylight before everything around San Diego becomes tucked in a shadow.

She takes the 5, because she’s got balls of steel now, and meanders them to Border Field State Park. The look on Grace’s face is asking _what the fuck?_ as she turns in the passenger seat for her inaudible query. The sign announces their arrival and before Grace can ask anything else, whether it be with her eyes or her ears or her heart, Frankie is leaving the vehicle and pressing her body into the metal hood.

Squinting against the dying light, she wriggles to make herself as comfortable as one can get sitting on top of a parked car with no padding at seventy-five. Regret will come, she knows, but she pulls her knees into her chest and adjusts the plastic bag she’d grabbed on her exit from the vehicle.

“I’d ask why we had to drive to the Mexican border, but I’m assuming this is all part of some greater metaphorical lesson,” Grace’s voice punctures the air with a stab, sass and sarcasm abundant. She perches beside Frankie and looks out across the expanse of land, at nothing. At everything. They watch as the seabirds plummet to the surf and the wind does a number on their hair.

“Something like that,” Frankie admits. “Do you remember when I said meet me in Mexico?”

Grace nods, tightly, small. Close to what she knows, what she has been. It’s an old cloak. Frankie doesn’t mind. She doesn’t wear it as much as she used to and Frankie likes to think she is, in part, a reason for that.

She pulls a joint from her pocket, feels Grace practically claw at her from her right.

“Are you insane!? We are right near the border. The damn name of the place even has it in the title. You’re going to light up _now_?”

Frankie would laugh if Grace’s eyes weren’t bugging out to the size of dinner plates. She also might let a snicker escape if she wasn’t here for the reason she is: atonement.

Grace doesn’t know that though and has willingly come along. Frankie suspects she would have for almost anything at this point, nothing as potentially bad as where they have been. Nothing able to induce nightmares worse than what they’ve already experienced.

“If this is some kind of test to prove that I’ll go along with anything, I think my track record has proven that,” Grace hoarsely whispers for no real reason whatsoever.

“I’m starting at the place where I made my last mistake,” Frankie cuts in, exhaling a fume upon the air. She watches the California winds beat against the Pacific Coast Gulf Stream. Watching it die before really getting to live. To feel empathy for smoke…

“So we’re working on your cosmic balance sheet?”

The joint poised precariously between Frankie’s digits shifts and feels like it’s falling, jolting her out of a dream-like reverie. It’s then she finds that it hasn’t fallen at all, instead being removed by Grace who inhales and then lets a stream of smoke curl into the sky.

A smile tugs at Frankie’s lips. Uptight Grace, no longer as square, removed from the little peg that she depended on for so long to define who she was. A solid nod to answer her question as Frankie lets her eyes scan the horizon again. Sand, surf, sun retreating into the blanket of the world more with every passing second.

“To really understand now, I have to go back to before. I have to make sense of it before I can fully transcend into the next stage of my life,” Frankie says, taking the joint again and staring at the smoldering flame and ash.

“I’d ask at which juncture this is going to finally start making sense, but I’ve learned to stop asking after five years,” Grace huffs, her usual agitated tone failing to reach its highest level.

“I have to go back to the beginning,” Frankie sighs, tokes. The pain begins to flutter, deep, but necessary. “I have to start where I went all wrong.”


	2. Mistake One: Marrying Sol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now begins the lengthier portion of the story, but still snippets in time.

She’s been told, but she’s blind. Not the official kind that gets you shades almost 24/7 and a white cane, but the one that makes you dopey and irrational. The adjectives that she will learn describe herself so well, but that seem too harsh when everything starts.

She’s always had good eyesight, 20/20 as it were, so seeing her vision blur was a bit unnerving. But now here they are, a weird blend of traditional Jewish and about three other cultures thrown in, providing the roadmap for their wedding day.

The destruction of the Temple, but then laughter and sound. In comes a vegan non-buttercream cake and a prayer to the Greater Being that rules over all. He or She might be listening or they could be wholly indifferent. Whatever the case, Frankie thinks it couldn’t hurt to start a new life on the foundation of hope.

Her stomach though rumbles, flops. A hunger needing fed, a prickling annoyance detracting from the events. She looks around, feels the lifeblood of Sol’s strong, but gentle hand. She wills her gut to find a center point of focus, to stop asking for something it can’t have.

A shadow ghosts across her mind and she almost makes it out as Teddie’s words, but then Sol spins her around on the dance floor and her head does too. 

They make love on a swirling whirl of Kantha blankets outside under the stars, forgoing the tent they’d erected to fall asleep under the heavens. Afterward, they stand nude against the wind. The Nag Champa sticks in their hands flicker to ash and she inhales the faint honey scent into her lungs. Sol’s warm and gentle hand rests at her hip, immobile but comforting. She tucks herself into the groove of his arm and shoulder, safe. It’s the perfect way to start a perfect marriage.

And really, it’s pretty fucking great for a long fucking time. Then the light switch is flicked and she’s finding that she’s standing alone in front of her moon phases cabinet wondering how many of them have passed since Sol’s spent quality time at home.

She’s proud, sure. Catapulting to partner with the firm is surely not an easy feat, but Frankie feels his absence exponentially, especially since Bud and Coyote have gained their own teenage freedom.

The phone trills behind and damn it, she lopes toward it. When she answers with an upbeat hello, the voice on the other end isn’t the one she wants to hear.

“I seem to be missing a husband. Again.”

Frankie yanks the phone away from her ear, placing it to her chest and growling. She’s beyond caring if the reverberations can be heard. Faking her best, she returns to the call.

“Sol and Robert are in Buffalo this week, no? Some big conference or something.”

“I’m beginning to wonder why I got married,” Grace sighs, then quiets.

They don’t shoot the shit. They don’t small or deep talk. It’s hard not to feel something shifting, many parties involved in the tilt.

 _He’s gay, Frankie_ tickles at her senses. She shoves it away. They’ve got twenty-five good years in. At this point, letting go would be ludicrous.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder they say. Or some bullshit like that,” Frankie offers.

“Thanks for the pep talk, Shakespeare,” Grace says sarcastically.

The comparison is wrong which she won’t find out until much much later. By then, she’s feeling more Sylvia Plath than Shakespeare because her husband is indeed gay but his gayness has been defined by Grace’s husband and suddenly the prospect of living with that woman forever seems like more than she can handle.

The first few weeks of the arrangement, while Grace is trying to shove her away and out and nowhere in proximity, Frankie steals small glances to the oven. _Fucking Plath._

It’ll be a few years before Grace makes her forget her pain in an all-new way, one that makes marrying Sol almost small.


	3. Mistake Two: The Dynamic of Family

Another year, another office party Frankie can’t find it in herself to fully partake in. She goes, because Sol, but these things always leave a bad taste in her mouth. The pretentious yanking of meat amongst the guests in the room makes Frankie want to guffaw from the absurdity.

Sol isn’t like all of these people. He’s caring and a little off center, animated and down to earth. He’d give anyone the shirt off of his back which is more than she can say about his partner.

She watches Robert from across the room, immaculately ironed designer suit and hair laden with gel and combed to within a millimeter of his scalp. Tanned skin peeks out from the cuffs of his jacket and she has to roll her eyes. Why Sol chooses to join in on this circle jerk with Robert is beyond her comprehension.

 _Not what Teddie said_ murmurs then dies when she sees Robert’s annoying other half from across the room. Her dress is all a high-end couture and she’s wearing her hair in the style of the time, a shifting 70s to 80s curl that is surprisingly close to the color of her roots. _Chestnut brown._  Frankie thinks of paint swatches and happier times than this.

Frankie eyes her with careful indifference as she gnaws on a carrot stick, pressing her back further into the wall and slouching down. It doesn’t work all that well because Grace catches her eye and weirdly approaches.

“Fucking shitbricks,” Frankie mumbles under her breath as Grace ambles up.

“Nice party,” she says as she scans the room. Looking for Robert who has ditched her again, no doubt.

“Yeah, all it’s missing is Anna Wintour sneering at the finger foods table,” Frankie quips.

Grace lets out a faux laugh and brings her elegant, long fingers to her chest. Her eyes still don’t focus on Frankie when she lets out, “I’m shocked you even know who she is.”

“I’m pretty good at knowing a pretentious asshole when I see one,” Frankie shoots back.

A sneer flits across Grace’s face, obviously getting the thinly veiled reference. Still, she doesn’t look at Frankie who follows her line of sight to see Robert making his way across the room. That sneer applied to Grace’s face transforms into a radiant smile when he slides in beside her.

“Robert,” she gets out but is quickly cut off.

“Honey, Sol and I are going to retreat for a while to talk business with some fellow associates. Could be a while,” he begins, then sees Frankie against the wall. “Oh, hey Frankie. I didn’t see you there.”

“Probably because you were more preoccupied with the thought of my husband,” leaves her mouth and she raises her eyebrows in surprise at her comment.

Grace barks out a laugh as she squeezes Robert’s shoulder, wraps her arms like a snake. Trying to hold something that doesn’t want to be held.

“I’ll be back later,” he says and doesn’t kiss her goodbye, doesn’t even offer a second look her way.

Grace looks suddenly smaller, if at all possible, like the room will eat her and swallow her whole. She doesn’t have Robert to adorn and drape herself over.

“You’ve studied art, right? I mean, you know what makes something beautiful,” Grace says quickly, eyes looking everywhere else in the room again except the bench against the wall where Frankie sits.

When the words leave Grace, Frankie lets out a loud scoff which leads the woman in front of her to finally whip her head around, eyes all flame. Frankie would like to be incredulous at this, but this is Grace Hanson. The woman is so superficial she should have expected this.

“I did a stint at Berkeley. And by ‘did a stint,’ I mean I slept with an art major who told me he was a professor of the Renaissance arts,” Frankie shrugs. “But yeah,” she says and stands to enter Grace’s space. To let her breath whisper-touch the pale skin of her shoulder not hidden by the maroon fabric of her dress. “I know you’re fishing and that’s fine because your dumb ass husband won’t tell you. You’re a piece of work, Grace Hanson. Objet d’art, as it were. But quite frankly? Your attitude sucks balls.”

Frankie backs away a little now to see the angular jut of Grace’s chin in the air, refusing to be torn down by a backhanded compliment. The only crack Frankie can see is the slight tremble of Grace’s painted red lips. An urge rises, strong, and Frankie fights not to wipe it right off in the way her nagging brain is humming.

“I’m pregnant,” Grace breathes and Frankie staggers. It shouldn’t feel like a punch to the gut, but it does.

This woman. This fucking woman who subjects her body to torture, staves off and starves it of what it needs and fills it with shit it doesn’t. Now, that same body is growing a life and Frankie wants to scream at the injustice of it all.

“Good fucking luck,” she manages to mutter and beats a hasty retreat.

Inside the bathroom stall, she bats the tears away like baseballs. She can’t get a grip on herself, feeling completely hollow. Jealousy and anger ignite and recede until the lid of the toilet starts to make her backside numb.

She stills when the hinges on her stall wiggle a little and she sees a shadow cast along the floor. A tall, thin one. Immediately, she feels bile rise.

“I didn’t tell you to hurt you,” is said softly against the wooden door and Frankie can almost feel the press of Grace’s palm against it.

“Well, you sure as fuck didn’t ease into it either,” Frankie spits out.

“I know you and Sol have been trying.”

“What if I’m never able to give him children? What if I _can’t_?” The words are almost too difficult to speak. Idly, she feels like a dupe for wasting the truth on Grace.

“There’s always adoption.”

“Are you trying to placate me? Don’t you think I want to feel the miracle of life growing in my body? Don’t you think I want to look into the eyes of my own child?”

“Lots of things need love that don’t belong to us,” Grace whispers and Frankie wants to ask _what in the ever loving fuck?_ Who is this person containing a hint of warmth instead of the banshee she’s used to dealing with?

Before she has time to let out another word, the hinges jiggle again from the loss of contact weight. Frankie hears the click of heels and a door open, then shut. Anguish envelops as she sits in the stall, alone.

It’ll be a while before she doesn’t resent Grace. And honestly, it’s easier to fall in love with her perfectly brewed child, blonde hair flowing on her precious little head and soft coos mixed with piercing cries. It shoots a pang through Frankie she can’t ignore.

When she holds the little boy in her hands, the beautiful dark skin and soulful eyes, she whispers “Nwabudike” on the air. Strength, it means. The word her body couldn’t muster to bear a child but could find somewhere to arrive at the resolve that love is love.

She was mistaken. Grace, all those months ago, oddly right.


	4. Mistake Three: Apologies With Alcohol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Alcohol dependency chapter. If such things trigger, you might want to avoid.

They make brochures about this. Pamphlets, leaflets, fliers about stacking life onto bones and letting time and booze erase memories. Meetings in large echoing rooms are for those who can’t conquer alone, who need a shoulder to rest their weary head. Frankie ignores all of these things.

Instead of an interventionist, she’s an enabler. A dirty, rotten one that extends an olive branch in the form of a crystal glass filled with crystal liquid. It’s translucent and see through, seemingly innocuous on appearance, and Grace’s go-to for when she’s scraping the bottom of the gutter.

And while Grace is an idiot who did exactly what Frankie told her _not_ to do fairly recently, she shouldn’t be surprised by the final outcome. It may be Grace’s fault, but there would have never been the precipe for her to fall over into Bad Decision Land if Frankie hadn’t marked out the path, red marker highlighting every twist and turn to Mission Viejo. To start a spiral of agonizingly hard events to trudge through.

Next came parties for the living who were soon to be deceased and it was like another dam had sprung a leak, emotional overflow strong and unbearable. So while Frankie had taken to her art to deal with what she couldn’t handle, she’d noticed Grace wandering and lost. How she’d eye the bottles around the house, on end tables or cabinets. Her steps would become a stutter or stop moving altogether. She’d then eye Frankie if she were around, asking her permission as best she was capable of. Because that’s what you do when you sit in people’s laps and shove cake and bodies and words due to the fact that you can handle none of them.

Grace seeks the things she knows she doesn’t need, without the sound of voice because it’s painful to admit. To crave the thing that turns you dark at edges and black in soul.

And now while lots of things are dead, not just figuratively but literally too. There is still blood pumping in their veins and Grace can beg for a life she doesn’t have. Can want to douse her insides and coherence. And really, she can have any man she wants. Probably. Most likely.

Her vibrator is getting some heavy rotation too, Frankie knows, which sends a rogue wave of something rolling through her. A thread to a much larger ball of yarn she isn’t ready to untangle. She’s careless sometimes, Grace is. A muffled cry through the wall in an hour the night knows too well or a glimpse of _its_ electric hue when Frankie personally delivers stacks of socks for her sock drawer. How said socks dash the sight of it quickly and silence eats the air too hard between them.

So when Grace gives her that look again, the one that says _I remember I fucked up with you and alcohol last time, but I really need a drink_ , Frankie grabs her purse and let’s her self-destructive friend get sloshed.

Glancing over, Frankie tries to blink the spots from the glaring neon of the sign behind them on the wall away. She has to look at something though because Grace really is fucking pathetic right now, filled to the brim with pity and loathing of every kind. Once, Frankie saw a picture of a wolf with arrows buried in its back. It trudged on, snarling at the world.  

The image isn’t too far off as she does a thorough once over of a woman she’s still learning how to process. There’s the old saying that people are piss and vinegar, but five shots have robbed Grace of anything mirroring gusto. This leads to an almost visceral reaction, what’s been missed greater in its unknowing.

“I wish I didn’t have mourn for all the things that are gone,” is mumbled against the bar and Frankie wishes a lot of things in that moment too.

Again, the neon glares.

The sentence could mean a number of things, but she can hazard a guess to their meaning. She wants to say, _how did he hurt you? What do you feel? Let me try to take the pain away._ But when it boils down to it, she can’t really. The relationship between them is just shifting into a neutral territory, less hostile and less heated.

Sometime later, when the memories of Phil and Babe and perhaps even Robert are as far away as they can probably be, she wraps her arms around Grace’s waist, carries her along on crumbling dreams and strength.

They reach her bedroom door and she smiles stupidly, grins into the layers of Frankie’s hair while inhaling. Her fingers rake through the air as she tries to touch Frankie in a way Frankie is sure would make her forget about Jacob again. The seconds, fleeting, are delicious and dangerous.

“Come to bed with me. Give me a face I know to wake up to in the morning,” Grace whispers. Not the Grace Frankie knows though. This is a drunken wraith who lets things float from her core that make no sense, a wail on the air by a ghost of a person, a broken soul.

Frankie follows diligently behind, strips Grace bare of the things she can remove while trying hard not to think of the things she deposited in her. Cloth has transformed to skin and clarity to haze.

She watches as Grace’s eyes flutter shut, lost to her ever handy shroud. Sleep comes then, deep and drowning. Moments tick and when she’s sure breath will continue, reluctance moves her limbs and the request gets tucked below.

When she eventually wakes, the day bright and burning, Grace doesn’t remember it at all. While Frankie should feel nothing sort of relief, a flicker, small, whispers. What she’s missed is a broken record on repeat.


	5. Mistake Four: Going to Santa Fe

She’s never been anywhere that dawn vaporizes the land sending clouds into the air. Dewy mornings create fogs of mist and she stands and watches them twist and curl and do everything but moan like ghosts. 

The blacktop of the city roads didn’t offer this, the beach having its own morning ritual to greet the day. Here, only here in this desert landscape of solitude, can she let her spirit ruminate on the choices of her life. 

It’s bigger than she can ever hold, bigger than she’ll ever be able to mend. To be so rearranged and disfigured. To be so scooped hollow and not know where to belong. 

Often her dreams are filled with rainbows of color, gravely voices holding more than can be let go. She sees soft skin and feels it too as long fingers grab her tightly and don’t want to seem to release. It’s the life she shouldn’t want and can’t have, the one she knows is more complicated 

Again, it hits. She has let go in a way, hasn’t she? At least that’s what it would seem like to an outsider.

Frankie knows though. She knows that she didn’t so much let go as run away. Prospect and guilt finally entwined, she let her voice say things she didn’t mean and her feet carry her in a direction she didn’t really want to go.

Fucking Santa Fe. It’s the thought she thinks when she’s on the phone to Grace and FaceTiming Grace and even when she can’t hear or see her. It comes up when she’s staring across a dinner table at Jacob or when she’s getting kicked out of museums or telling her fifth artist with an adopted black son that  _ La Jolla isn’t like this.  _

The realization of how different life is here and not how she imagined at all is at first a small speck, but a seed of disquiet that grows and grows.

It wakes her in the night, makes her look a little too long at Jacob’s face in the moonlight and think,  _ you aren’t Grace _ and that stills her. It comes back when they’re at the grocery store and he lets her put banned food friends into the basket and she has to unfold the informational material stuck in her issues of  _ High Times _ later. As if clinging to the warnings will glue Grace back into her a little more. 

So really what began as an escape has become a mistake. 

There is too much sun and too many snakes and not enough Grace and when too much and too little mix, Frankie still can’t find a balance she likes to live in. When Bud calls, offering a sabbatical for her sabbatical, she jumps at the chance. Because Santa Fe is turning into a chore instead of a dream fulfilled.

The downward spiral continues as she meets the lodger and instead of telling Grace she saw her and felt her everywhere, both with eyes open and closed, she pretends none of it matters. Her palms have to shove against the bathroom door as she slides down it when she learns that the guy with the great hair and cocky attitude has been in the place Frankie’s found herself wondering about for an exorbitant amount of time. 

Does he give Grace the tenderness she needs, even though she convinces herself she’s not worthy of it? Does he kick her in the ass when she’s full of herself and still resoundingly standing firm on the notion that life is only about ache in one form or another? Does he sit on the couch and just let her be her, shorn of any proclivities and just existing and content with it? 

Frankie highly doubts as they stumble through learning the shape of one another again. The cheddar biscuit, clipped cuticle, co-signing stranger that she meets at the airport to the semi-familiar friend who hovers perhaps a little much and hasn’t removed every part of Frankie as she takes the outlawed packages hidden behind health food in her hands with a smile.

She’d once told Grace that Sol didn’t feel the same, that she didn’t fit with him anymore and it was peculiar in a way it had probably always been, but she was naive to it until it was already past the point of saving. 

Frankie fights this with Grace, oh, does she fight. Maddening, beautiful, heart-wrenching Grace was never supposed to end up the surrogate relationship for her failed marriage four years ago. She wasn’t supposed to sheer Frankie’s current one at the knees, forever maimed and never the same. 

The pool water is cool to counter the heated press of Grace against her body. The air billowing in from the ocean and warmth of the blanket a pole to the delicate flattening of her lips to Frankie’s forehead.

She wants to open her eyes, say  _ tell me not to feel everything, Grace. Let me be something other than ruins because of you.  _

Friendship feels even hard to come by as Frankie squeezes her lids together. Immobility paralyzes her. She lets Grace walk away instead of following behind like so many nights ago, to finally admit that a gentle question to her body would remake the form of her she’s wanted to own for over the last year. Frankie though has almost let Santa Fe demolish them completely. 


	6. Mistake Five: Getting Dead

For the second time in her life now, a piece of metal has completely fucked things up. The first time was a ring, of course, but now it’s a key. A damn opener to a box that will remain forever locked now.

She could have draped it from her Panic Alert, looped the string through the hole and left it glinting in the light of the California sun and bedazzled as shit. A reminder to not forget yet another thing on a growing list. That’s all small potatoes now, the object a needle in the haystack of the world.

Experiencing death before actually being six feet is another weird surrealness to hobble through. She’s beginning to dream of the real event and it’s worse than she imagined it would be. If she had the time to develop good sense, she’d realize a plethora of people are missing that line her life. And yeah, Bud’s over there shaking his head but there’s Grace standing over her and _crying_ for fuck’s sake. A pineapple to the abdomen ends the trippy train of hallucinations and she growls, feels the need to center her core.

With a huff, she catapults off of the couch and makes her way to the main house. Grace is gone, more unsavory places than Frankie wants to think about, so she plops into her swing with little ceremony.

It makes rotations, twirls and leaves the room a spinning blur of nothing. Her life. Just like her damn life.

She’s jerked to a stop all of a sudden and then peering up at Grace, whose eyes question and her body clings to the fabric of her pajamas. Frankie clings to her bottom lip for refrain.

“We already know the answer to this question if you’re practicing the ‘How many circles does it take to get to the center of Frankie’s equilibrium’,” Grace reminds.

“Forty-two,” Frankie answers idly and hears Grace’s own voice backing it in confirmation.

“Yeah,” Frankie sighs and slumps further into the pillow and swing itself. How long had she let herself fall down the rabbit hole? Long enough not to hear Grace come home and change, obviously.

“Move over,” Grace commands.

“Huh?”

“Move over. I’m coming in beside you.”

“There’s not enough room,” Frankie points rather dumbly. If only she’d toned it down on the fabric today.

“It’s not like I’m an Amazon. We can fit. Just try,” Grace points too and Frankie slides against the side of the woven basket.

Other things that weave are Grace’s arm around Frankie’s back and hip and she leans her head against the backing of the chair. It moves a little, forward and backward in a lazy glide.

“Today sucked,” Frankie huffs, brain filled with popcorn balls and credit cards and cell phones. All a _rat-tat-tat_ in her mind, but not as loud as the desperate itch to rest her hand against the expanse of Grace’s thigh which is mere millimeters away and already pressed against her own.

“You might want to invest in some galoshes,” Grace suggests. “Since you like to go in deep.”

Another refraining lip bite and having to will her legs not to clamp together. (They need to do that a lot now that there’s no Jacob and just Grace) Sensory overload and imagery aside, Frankie rolls her shoulders as best she can and looks upward past the pattern of wicker.

“I just didn’t want to pay another sixty dollars. Who knew the United States Postal Service were money grubbing leeches? Hell, I’ve probably already paid for that stupid lockbox three times over. At this point, it should be their civic duty to just _give_ it to me,” Frankie explains in exasperation.

“I’d have given you the money. It sure beats the alternative,” Grace says quietly.

“It’s the principle of the matter, Grace,” Frankie begins but stops when she realizes the part she missed. To ignore it would be another mistake and she’s got too many of those already in the can.

“Wait, what?” she finds herself asking.

“I don’t even want you to die,” Grace whispers and it takes everything for Frankie’s heart not to stop as she feels Grace’s head come to rest and she tucks her body into her.

They haven’t talked about The End. Capitalized, official, and approaching. Frankie feels another emotion ransacking the lightness in her chest, the feeling of Grace connected everywhere.

Good ole’ post offices. Forcing best friends to contemplate the end of life and giving the nudge to finally talk about one thing they cannot escape.

“Kind of inevitable for both of us. Someday,” Frankie can’t help but offer. “Unless Nick finds a way to actually freeze heads and allows me to hang out at his royal palace when I do kick the bucket. You know, because he’ll have about fifteen years left before he follows along?”

Grace doesn’t take the jailbait, instead presses impossibly closer. “This feels bigger than a lost mailbox key to me, weirdly. I shouldn’t feel anything but...you know what I mean, Frankie.”

 _Yeah_ , Frankie thinks, _I do_. Because while she isn’t physically gone, this will all happen again someday. There will be a chain of events renouncing her of life. And while Frankie can’t and won’t ever know the true order of things, Grace might very well be around for that end too. It could be more than post offices and studio tables.

“I know what you mean,” Frankie finally says. She has all along. Snaking her arms around Grace, she holds on to the only piece of life she can. She may be deceased on paper, but that’s the only thing, as she feels her heart flutter beneath Grace’s fingertips on her chest.

“I don’t want to feel this stop beating,” Grace says in her tone just barely above audible and Frankie strains, leans closer because this must be the heart to heart that’s been coming ever since Santa Fe.

Instead, as she leans in, she’s met by Grace’s icy eyes and they’re inches apart. It would be so easy to lean in, to assure her that she’ll try to make the transition as easy as possible someday but then…

 _Is that the dying scent of Nick?_ she has time to think before she’s touching the corner of Grace’s mouth, just to the side where her delicate lifelines show and the softness of her cheek. Before she’s openly taking a sliver of the thing that belongs to him. Depositing a feather-light kiss, she tries to back away but Grace keeps her close, makes them breathe the same air.

“I’m here,” Frankie assures, the only thing she can say. Because now she is. And maybe while they’ve still got time, however long, she can find her way to Grace like she’s been wanting since they walked away from the art show and Frankie tried not to fall in a number of ways.

It’s a feat. Hopefully, the days ahead are enough. For now, they meld and think of things that cannot be avoided.


	7. Mistake 6: Almost, Mexico

As far as her screw-ups go, this one shouldn’t be near the top but is. She should have known that after that tedious and meticulously planned scavengender hunt, Bud would be super anal about the goings on of his child.

When he parks the car in front of the house, he turns off the ignition and just sits, his head down and shoulders slumped. It’s as if he’s so weighed down by what’s going to come next, he can’t even stand tall enough to say it. 

“You screwed up royally today. There will be consequences to your actions.” This must be the “later” he was referring to. She’s vaguely aware his hands are now free from the wheel and can reach out to wring her neck like his face looks like it wants to do. 

Frankie realizes she’s been alternating between wringing her own hands roughly and bunching up the material of her skirt. The impact of his words stops the entire rotation of the world.

“Bud…”

“No, Mom. No. This is not Dad or Coyote we are talking about. Or even Grace, who you weirdly babysit most of the time,” he cuts off, and Frankie feels so angry about everything and everyone. So much so that hearing him speak of Grace the way he does makes her throat burn with unspoken things. “This is  _ my _ child we are discussing. You don’t get to dictate what goes on with her.”

“I wasn’t trying to! What happened today was a series of freak and unfortunate incidents. I can guarantee that it will never happen again. I swear on my Pablo Picasso paint brushes. Or maybe Picasso paint brushes but I digress...”

“Is everything just one big joke to you? Oh, tee hee. I go to the Mexican border accidentally, Bud, but don’t be pissed because all that’s in Tijuana are bomb ass taco stands, not drug cartels and cocaine.”

“You’re overreacting…”

She jumps when he slams down his fists on the steering wheel and lets out heavy breaths from his nose. 

“ _ Don’t _ tell me what I’m doing either,” he warns, tone fire and ice. 

They sit in a tense silence for a few moments before she gathers the chutzpah to speak. She opens her mouth and he jerks his head toward her at lightning speed, his eyes still holding a searing anger. Which she gets-she totally does. But Faith’s sleeping soundly behind them, no worse for wear. Frankie could have almost gotten her a little baby sized passport, bomb ass taco stand first on the list.

“I know you’re royally cheesed and have every right to be, but if we can just talk this out…”

“Get out of the car,” is said in a hushed tone, barely audible with her shitty ears.

“What?”

“I said,” Bud raises his voice, “Get out of the car.”

She’s frantic now, heart beating fast. Damage control isn’t working at all.  _ Oh no, oh no, oh no _ , her brain keeps repeating. There’s nothing to do but dig in.

“We can work this out. I know we can, Bud.”

He raises a hand now and removes hers from the grip on his shirt. The anger his eyes held now reflect back only sadness. Frankie flashes back to those big, brown eyes looking up at her as a baby, depending on her for everything.  _ Take care of me, love me, don’t ever leave me _ , they’d said. Now they say,  _ you can’t even help yourself, get away, leave.  _ And it hurts to the bone.

Like walking through a murk, she exits the car in a daze, maybe watches as Bud drives off without a word. Her feet probably carry her into the house and while she’d normally notice the gaping holes in the wall, she’s got another one exposed and in her chest so the structural damage of the home doesn’t compare to the structural damage of her heart. 

Her vision blurs and her fingers rake through time and air and connect with the fabric of the chair. There’s grit there, crumbly dust from all around and it feels like a fucking metaphor for life right now because she wants to breathe but can’t amid the collapse. 

Seconds tick into a minute which crashes into multiple markers of time. She isn’t sure how long she sits and stares into nothingness while feeling it all the same. 

Behind her, in a different plane or hemisphere or version of life itself, a question rings out trying to tether her to some solidity of anything. “What the hell happened?”

“I got lost,” Frankie mutters. Lost in the mess, lost trying to figure out what the hell happened, lost following an ice cream truck to Mexico. It means all of it as space continues to be a point in front of her, and Grace a small pinprick behind.

Shuffling, still behind. Then she's there, holding her, keeping everything together even though it's falling apart. Frankie cries then even as Grace's lips seal themselves to her skin. Her cheek might have a chance to realize what's it's received, if not for the shambles plaguing heavily.


	8. Rectification

The ice cream in the pints is more drinkable at this point. No matter. She spoons up the contents and gathers what solidity out of it she can. Grace has inched closer on the hood, feet on the grill and her elbows resting on her knees as she holds her face in her hands.

The park will be closing soon, but now that the story has been unraveled, Frankie supposes she can begin to redeem. The ocean calls out neverending, waves splashing sand and shifting the world. The mistakes have had the same effect as the water, taking her life and making it something new. 

“When you said to meet you in Mexico, I wasn’t aware that it was going to be the Chocolate Factory Boat Ride of your life story,” Grace muses, no sense of frustration in her tone. More like empathy, which Frankie almost hates even more. 

“By now, you should know better than to expect anything else,” Frankie says with a head shake. When Grace’s hand finds hers on the hood, allowing a smile to spread takes away the edge to the memories. 

“I love you. You know that right?” Grace asks and her blue eyes pierce. Frankie fights not to cry. “We all make mistakes. I mean, half of yours have me in them.”

“You were there for a lot of them,” Frankie agrees and then turns. “But that’s kind of the point. I wanted to cleanse my soul of those things before I go any further in my life.”

Grace leans in then, kisses her hard and firm. There’s no reason to it, no reaction to another. It’s beyond description, to see her no longer hesitant and unsure. While the brashness of their relationship has receded some, they still burn hot like a streaking star. As Grace samples her, takes parts of Frankie back to herself, it feels like the world has finally caught up with them, has finally read the contents of their hearts right.

When Grace backs away to gain air and what Frankie assumes is recollection of the publicness of the act, she finds out she’s completely wrong. She all but breathes the words into Frankie’s mouth, filling her full. “I need you forever.” Her forehead rests and her eyes are stark again, no lack of sense or clarity. 

Explaining that forever is a false construct seems unromantic. She’s been given this by Grace, can fall asleep staring at the wrinkles around her mouth when she smiles or the crows feet around her eyes. Not blemishes that remind Frankie of how old they’re getting, but how wonderful time has been to Grace even if Grace hasn’t been wonderful to herself. 

It’s why she fiddles in her pocket, why she slides the box across the hood and looks out across the expanse of the sea. Because Grace, after all this time, is still capable of making Frankie anticipate all the wrongs that can happen, to not expect or feel worthy of what she gets. It’s as if she’s still inside a dream, inside a bed in Santa Fe begging to regain the missed.

Beside her, there’s a choking noise. She gets it. They haven’t talked a lot about their agreement or it’s transition from lovers to girlfriends. Saying “I love you” openly isn’t a huge deal anymore, but Frankie can surmise that what comes next might be.

She watches as Grace flips open the lid. Sees how she inhales as the small band hits the dying light. Actions stop just short there. She doesn’t make a move to put it on. 

“Pick a finger, any finger. Doesn’t matter which,” Frankie mumbles, all wires and nerve endings spiking.

Grace looks up then from her gaze at the object below, an imperceptible flicker of her lips. “So I should tell my heart rate to get itself under control because this isn’t anything big?”

“You know how I love Tuesdays.”

“This isn’t a Happy Tuesday gift and you know it. Don’t screw with me. Not about this,” Grace warns, an edge to her that makes Frankie wince a little. 

“Okay, okay. You don’t ever like to take things slow,” Frankie mutters and shoots a glance at Grace, reference to other things received. “The thing is…”

She stops and sighs heavily. It’s easier to think things now than to say them. Of all the times to grow a filter…

“The thing is…?” they say in unison and then laugh. 

“The thing is, I need you forever too. And you’ve got me for it. As long as your Christ is compelled to let me. To infinity and beyond.”

“Now you’re mixing religion and children’s movies,” Grace winces and rubs her temples. “I knew I’d never make it through this.”

“You love me though,” Frankie pokes.

Grace’s lip trembles then and she nods. “Yeah, I do.”

“So, which will it be?” Frankie asks, rubbing her hands together as if she’s about to watch the least frightening game of chance as opposed to the most nerveracking one. 

Grace holds the metal between her fingers, leans in a bit so that she can run her nose along the skin of Frankie’s cheek. 

“Tell me where to put it,” she whispers. She needs it, needs to hear it on her ears. 

Frankie can’t though, not this time. The choosing has to be out of her hands no matter what and how much she wants. She rests her own fingers atop Grace’s looks her in the eyes because it’s oddly the only grounding place to be.

“Let’s pick together?” she says full of apprehension and hope. When she feels Grace slide it resolutely home, she leans in to sear away the aches, the heartaches, the mistakes. 

She kisses Grace because the end may be nigh but it feels like a fresh start to a fresh life, the potential representation of peace coming at seventy-six. 


End file.
